Tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis suffered persecution and
death under Stalin's Purge both prior to World War II and afterwards.
Recently discovered documents indicate that poet Nigar Rafibeyli
[pronounced nee-GAHR ra-fee-BEY-lee] was also a target of Stalinist
repression. Her crime: simply being the daughter of a physician
who had owned land and been charged with anti-communist political
activity when the Bolsheviks came to power in Azerbaijan in 1920.
It didn't matter that her father, Khudadat Rafibeyli, had been
executed that year and that she was only seven years old at the
time.

Now 60 years
later, her son Anar, one of Azerbaijan's most prominent writers,
reveals the accusations by the Communist Party against his mother
that were published in the newspapers and other official documents
showing that she narrowly escaped exile herself.

Now
that our country has gained its independence, gradually some
of the documents that have cloaked the mysteries of our century
are being revealed. In the case of my own mother, it wasn't so
long ago that we discovered that she, too, had been targeted
to be sentenced into exile, but by some mere twist of fate that
we have yet to comprehend, she was spared. Here are the facts
that we have been able to piece together so far.

Portrait of one of Azerbaijan's famous families of writers:
Left to right: Nigar Rafibeyli (poet), son Anar (now President
of Writer's Union), Rasul Reza (poet) and daughter Fidan (now
professor at Azerbaijan State University). Baku. 1949. National
Archives.

Back in 1930, the secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan's
Communist Party published a long article in several official
newspapers severely accusing my mother Nigar Rafibeyli and other
members of her family of stirring up political unrest.

The article
read: "Khudadat Rafibeyov, former Governor-General of Ganja
and one of theMusavat
Party 1leaders made plans to
attack the Baku Commune. After being accused of being one of
the organizers of the uprising, he was shot in Ganja in 1920.
This wealthy land owner left his wife Javahir Khanim, his daughter
Nigar Khanim and two sons as heirs. The daughter of that Musavat
leader and landlord is an offspring of her father. This Musavat
rabble, these parasites who pretend to be Soviet supporters,
are making the cultural rounds and poisoning our younger generation
with land owner's venom.

The crime
of the century will never be exposed. History will hide it all
in its pages. Even if the coming generations inquire of it. Their
questions will be frozen on their lips...

-
Nigar Rafibeyli

"Nigar
Khanim is one of those waiting for the sun to rise from the East.
The daughter of Khudadat, who was one of the protectors of English
imperialism, does not ascribe to the fact that the golden sun
has risen from the North [Russia]. She does not feel the shining
of the guiding star risen from the North. That star is showing
the East how to liberate itself from the oppression of imperialism.
It seems that this landlord's daughter and those like her have
not yet understood this and still need be punished. Only afterwards
will they understand where and when the sun rises and why the
golden sun rises from the North. Why hasn't Nigar Khanim - and
those like her-been exposed yet? Why haven't their real bourgeoisie
faces been shown to anyone?" (From the newspaper called
"Communist," December 18, 1930).

A number of poets and writers immediately joined in this severe
castigation that the Party had initiated. My mother was fired
from the office where she was working. It was about that time
that she met the poet Rasul Reza. In 1934 they became engaged and went
to Moscow for university studies. They eventually married on
February 11, 1937. Many years later, my mother wrote a poem dedicated
to the memory of her girlfriend Nazakat Aghazade and referred
to how strong the men in their lives had had to be to associate
with them:

"On the
difficult ways of life
Ali and Rasul became faithful friends of ours.
They were openhearted,
Ardent guys.
At those times, being able to reach us
Required not a simple love-
But a great valor."

Nazakat Aghazade was the daughter of Hasan Aghayev, the deputy
secretary of the first independent Azerbaijan State Parliament.
He had also been killed in 1920. Aghazade herself was the wife
of dictionary editor and linguist Ali (Aliheydar Orujov).

Those intellectuals in that literary group who happened to be
studying in Moscow in 1937 - my mother and her fiance Rasul Reza,
Nazakat Khanim, Anvar Mammadkhanli, Mehdi Husein and Sabit Rahman-somehow
all managed to be spared the bloody meetings in Baku and the
tragedy of that terrible year. On February 11, Husein
Javid,
Ahmad
Javad,
Seyid Husein, Mikayil
Mushfig2and other cultural figures took part
in Rasul and Nigar's wedding party. Shortly afterwards, they
themselves became victims of Stalin's repression. My mother always
used to say, "Our wedding was the last festivity in the
lives of those unfortunate guys."

The repression even threatened my mother in the years that followed,
especially in the latter part of the 1940s, after the war, when
Stalin again actively began the purges.

One document that we've acquired from the Soviet secret police's
archives sheds further light on this situation. It was procured
with the help of Akif Rafibeyli who now works as Deputy Justice
Minister of Azerbaijan. The document was in the archives of the
Department of the Interior and speaks of the intention of sending
Nigar and her mother into exile.

It reads: "Rafibeyova Javahir Khanim. Born in 1880. The
wife of former Ganja governor-general Khudadat Rafibeyov, who
was shot in 1920 by the Soviet government. Her son Rashid studied
in Moscow until recently. "Her younger son Kamil is in the
Musavat party and has emigrated to Turkey and is living in Gars
3
now, presently serving in the armed forces of Turkey. He has
liaisons with the Istanbul Committee of the Musavat Party and
the Turkish Secret Service. Actively spying against the USSR.

"Her daughter Nigar has two uncles who have emigrated to
Turkey. The mother and daughter have been exchanging letters
with relatives abroad since 1936. They are on hostile terms with
the Soviet government." The damning words: "Send to
Exile" were signed by "Grigoryan". It turns out
that Khoren Grigoryan was one of the directors of Azerbaijan's
secret police and one of the principal executors and organizers
of Stalin's repression in 1937. He later was exposed as a member
of the Dashnak 4which sought to annihilate
Azeris, especially members of the intelligentsia. Grigoryan was
convicted and shot to death in 1956 along with Mir Jafar Bagirov,
Stalin's deputy in Azerbaijan, once the Mastermind himself was
dead (1953).

Curiously, on that same document were three words "To be
delayed" scrawled in handwriting. This decision apparently
had been made by Mir Jafar Bagirov. Of course, why the order
was delayed and eventually commuted is a mystery that Bagirov
seems to have carried to his grave. Who knows what sort of reasoning
or capricious mood he must have been in at that time to have
postponed this dreadful fate? Maybe he didn't want to destroy
Rasul Reza's family since Reza himself was already known as a
public figure and an influential poet by that time. But those
three words, "To be delayed" determined not only the
fate of my grandmother, my mother and my father but also that
of we three children-my two sisters and me.

Footnotes:
1 Musavat Party - the political party that was most
active in its opposition to the Bolsheviks, who brought communism
to Azerbaijan (late 1910s). UP2 Husein
Javid, Ahmad Javad, Seyid Husein, Mikhayil Mushfig were all Azerbaijani
writers who were killed during Stalin's Repression of the 1930s.UP3 Gars
- a city in Turkey. UP4 Dashnak - an Armenian political group most often
associated with terrorism throughout the world during this century.
UP

Anar is one
of Azerbaijan's most distinguished writers and thinkers. He currently
holds the esteemed positions of Member of Parliament and President
of the Writer's Union of Azerbaijan. His mother and father, Nigar
Rafibeyli and Rasul Reza, were both nationally recognized poets.